When we develop accounts of the good life we inevitably need to work with simplified images of human beings so as to limit the ideas our account must grapple with. Yet, in the process of this simplification we often exclude certain types of agents from having moral status because our image of humanity does not take their key features into account. The problems created by this type of simplification are very apparent when we consider how virtue ethics deals with the lives of people with Intellectual Disabilities. Since virtue ethics focuses on reason it very quickly excludes people with limited intellectual functioning from being moral agents who have access to the happy life. In this thesis I explore this problem of exclusion further and present a revised set of virtues based on the Capabilities Approach by Martha Nussbaum. By developing this new focus for virtue ethics I create a virtue-based approach to the good life that is not only more inclusive of agents with limited intellectual functioning but also represents a richer path to the good life for all agents.

When we develop accounts of the good life we inevitably need to work with simplified images of human beings so as to limit the ideas our account must grapple with. Yet, in the process of this simplification we often exclude certain types of agents from having moral status because our image of humanity does not take their key features into account. The problems created by this type of simplification are very apparent when we consider how virtue ethics deals with the lives of people with Intellectual Disabilities. Since virtue ethics focuses on reason it very quickly excludes people with limited intellectual functioning from being moral agents who have access to the happy life. In this thesis I explore this problem of exclusion further and present a revised set of virtues based on the Capabilities Approach by Martha Nussbaum. By developing this new focus for virtue ethics I create a virtue-based approach to the good life that is not only more inclusive of agents with limited intellectual functioning but also represents a richer path to the good life for all agents.

This study aims to trace points of intersection between the too often divorced disciplines of literature, continental philosophy, and the hard sciences in Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love.” In short, this thesis will not only explore how such conversations surface within the short story, but will also serve as an explication of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of body and space, and the theory of epigenetics. Through these explications, the thesis itself will also gear one discipline towards the other as both theories intimately bind the environment with the body, and the body with the environment. Thus, the body and the environment are not separate and passive, but active and intertwined in a manner much like the aforementioned disciplines I posit are. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to first postulate that such conversations between literature, philosophy, and science are already occurring, and as such, stress that such conversations need further discussion and exploration.

Ce mémoire propose une analyse des enjeux éthiques et politiques à l’œuvre dans les crises des réfugié.es à l’aune de l’éthique féministe du care. Il présente une critique épistémologique des approches prédominantes en philosophie politique libérale : en raison d’un manque de considérations empiriques, ces approches créent des angles morts et invisibilisent certain.es enjeux vécus par les réfugié.es. De plus, la philosophie politique libérale n’offre pas les outils normatifs adéquats pour établir une responsabilité envers les réfugié.es. Face à ce double constat, je propose que l’éthique du care peut contribuer à remédier à ces problèmes. D’une part, grâce à la notion de responsabilité relationnelle, on peut montrer en quoi les citoyen.nes et États du Nord global ont la responsabilité de venir en aide aux populations déplacées. D’autre part, l’analyse contextuelle des enjeux quotidiens et incarnés préconisée par cette théorie éthique permettra d’éviter de reproduire certains angles morts dans nos enquêtes philosophiques. Cela permettra ultimement de mieux identifier et comprendre les injustices reproduites par les crises des réfugié.es et les meilleures façons d’y remédier. / This thesis offers an analysis of the ethical and political issues at play in contemporary refugee crises in the light of the feminist ethics of care. It presents a methodological critique of the predominant approaches in liberal political philosophy: due to a lack of empirical considerations, it tends to hide concrete issues experienced by refugees. Moreover, liberal political philosophy does not offer adequate normative tools to establish responsibility for refugees. In light of this, I argue that the ethics of care can help to overcome these problems. On the one hand, through the notion of relational responsibility, it can show that citizens and states in the global North have a responsibility to help displaced populations. On the other hand, the ethics of care preconizes a contextual analysis of everyday and embodied issues: this will avoid reproducing blind spots in our philosophical inquiries. This will ultimately allow us to better identify and understand the injustices reproduced by refugee crises, as well as the steps needed to remedy them.

This Master Thesis focuses on the theoretical reconstruction of a positive feminist conceptualization of vulnerability via the thorough systematization and critical comparison of Martha Fineman’s socio-legal philosophy and Judith Butler’s poststructuralist ethico-political theory. In the introductory remarks, the reader becomes familiar with the turbulent receptions and numerous interdisciplinary re-artications of the term vulnerability within the realms of contemporary feminist theory. The second chapter mainly illustrates the core thematic axes of Fineman’s vulnerability approach. More specifically, the second chapter explores Fineman’s vulnerability perspective both in terms of an alternative ontological paradigm revolving around the recognition of our fundamentally vulnerable, shared, fragile and dependent universal condition, as well as in relation to its juridico-political normative implications apropos of the legitimate political organization of democratic societies and the just function of their central institutions. Furthermore, the third chapter systematizes the dual texture of the Butlerian radicalization of vulnerability in terms of both an existential condition of irreducible relationality, as well as in terms of a socio-politically contextualized and differentially allocated distribution of violence, deprivation, insecurity, injury and trauma to certain -gendered, racialized, sexualized and nationalized- social categories. To that end, the third chapter further elucidates the nuanced differentiations between the Butlerian conceptions of vulnerability, precariousness, precarity and dispossession, while further investigating Butler’s revolutionary constellation of vulnerability and resistance. Conclusively, this Master Thesis critically designates the similarities and divergences between the two above analysed feminist frameworks and supports that the twofold texture of the Butlerian vulnerability theory invests Butler’s ethico-political theory with more nuanced theoretical conceptions and more empowering political devices in comparison to Fineman’s universalistic postidentitarian vulnerability approach. In order to further enhance this core argument, I develop my own critical assessment of Fineman theory’s epistemological, political and conceptual limitations in regard of its self-declared ‘post-identitarian’ structure.

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Through the lens of the horror film and the fairy tale, this thesis explores the notion of the grotesque as a boundary phenomenon—a negotiation of what is self and what is other. As such, it locates the function that the monstrous and the grotesque have in the formation of a personal and social identity. In asking why we take pleasure in the perverse, I explore how permutations of guilt, victimhood, and desire can be actively rewritten, in order to construct a stable sense of self.

In what follows, I highlight negative environmental perspectives and actions based on traditional patterns of Western dualist thought with the ultimate aim of developing an alternative way of relating to the environment and the ‘other’, in general. In pursuit of such an alternative, I utilize embodied artistic practices in order to present the notion that one can engage more holistically with one’s environment, and the other. Through habitual, lifelong ‚Ways‛ cultivating specific practices generally necessary to creating and to viewing art, I argue, one can refine one’s ethical awareness and action. Following the aims of care ethics’ more context and experience-oriented approach to moral concern and to treatment of the other, as well as the philosophies of Japan, and feminist philosopher, Irigaray, I show how these artistic practices form a new awareness and stance that encompasses components of care. Finally, I briefly highlight how art has been used for positive activism.

Quotations like the Sharpest Claws describes a multimedia installation composed of paintings and sound that explores the theory of cognitive dissonance, a controversial psychological model that attempts to explain how we deal with inconsistency in incompatible beliefs. Imagination is given primacy as a source for truth-seeking and world-building. The uncanny and surreal are used as entry points into this topic. The title is derived from a description of Eileen Myles’ poetry I once read in an anonymous review. Their writing was described as beyond poetry in a way that it could only be described as such when surrounded by “quotations like the sharpest claws.” This phrase has since stuck with me as a way to describe my own work, dealing with “truth,” “metaphor,” and “cognition”, although in my case these claws are indicative of doubt surrounding the aforementioned subjects.

Enact in Disappearance excavates the unseen through the medium of photography in order to chart a new strategy for knowing and communing with a complicated world.